X
by Lynx Traveller
Summary: Why exactly did Rampage let go of the shard??


Disclaimer: I don't own Beast Wars, Hasbro does.

In any case, please tell me what you think.

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I looked into the eyes of the bot hovering over me; I could read the hatred in them.

Hatred of me.

I smiled reflectively back on the stroke of genius that had led to this particular bot hating me so much.

It had all started back on Omicron; I'd been slaughtering bots left and right in a euphoric lust to feed on their pain and suffering. One of the bots, a blue and silver one, had been at the head of the security force called in to stop me.

Of all the bots on that dirt ball, his spark was the only one that didn't fear me.

It was certainly a surprise; I hadn't anticipated such a turn of events, so I'd captured him to torture, to find why he didn't fear me, to see what it would take to make him dread me.

His resolution was strong; I felt waves of hatred pouring off him. My spark hungrily ate them up, but it didn't have the same effects as fear did. 

He'd sworn that I wouldn't break him, that if I killed him while he was defiant that he'd win, and that I'd never be able to take that much away from him.

At the time I couldn't understand his reasoning, he'd still be dead right? What did it matter if he felt that he'd won something?

I learned later that day that he had family; rich bots seemed to occasionally take on newly programmed bots. It was supposed to be a gesture picked up from a place called Earth, but I knew nothing of that, only that it was a way of getting to him.

I'd finally tracked down his 'family' and I eagerly watched his expression as I led them into the room.

I felt the waves of fear rolling off his family, and it made the experience all that much more enjoyable. There was a small amount of fear coming from the blue bot, but for his family, not from me.

His 'father' spoke up, wrecking the moment; I threw him against the wall, hard enough to break his arm. How dare he ruin the moment?

The waves of fear and anger redoubled, but the feeling was lost. I angrily turned on the fallen bot, drawing the service weapon that I'd liberated from the blue bot.

In a flash of divine inspiration, just before I pulled the trigger, I thought of a way to make the bots defiance wilt. I put the gun in his hand, breathing in the hatred, knowing that if I hadn't garrotted his arm with the wire attached to the weights under the table as a slow form of torture that he'd have gladly have taken a shot at me.

He dropped the carbine, making me stoop to pick it up. I put it back in his hand, closed his finger around the handle, and made his finger squeeze off the shot, which shattered his 'fathers' spark casing.

The feeling of ecstasy returned, and prompted me to make him fire at his 'mother' in a similar manner, just to give me another taste of the fear in the room.

I saw the bots eyes glare at me, then look to his 'sister' with a look of genuine fear for her safety.

Rather than shoot her, I walked up behind her, and in a mockery trial of the justice that they held so dear, I sentenced her to death for simply being a maximal. I drove my fist into her back, squeezing her spark until it popped and squelched through my fingers.

Ah, if only there had been one other to execute; the waves of hatred had reached a new peak, this was better than the fear of the masses!

The bot swore something about hunting me down until his family and friends were avenged, that was when I got the inspiration for a way to make this bot hate me more.

I set him free, knowing that he was in no state to come after me; he'd probably do something foolish like see to it that his family's bodies were dealt with in the proper way before coming after me.

It gave me time to check the records on the bot, to know that many who he had served with were aboard another colony; Starbase Rugby.

I went there and killed many many bots; the colony there was better established than the one at Omicron, and there was more fear for me to soak up. I found the friends of the blue bot, and took great delight in explaining to them why they had to die. I tortured them in inventive ways, before using their corpses to decorate the spaceport, knowing that their blank gazes would be the first thing that the blue bot would see when he came to investigate.

I deliberately left a trail, left clues as to where I would be going next, anything to continue the hunt. If I couldn't break him and make him fear me, then I'd drive him insane with a lust for revenge.

He'd caught me once, but his drive for justice had meant that he couldn't kill me; he'd left it for the courts to decide my fate. I guess that by that stage he wasn't quite insane enough; I wanted blind rage from him, the same rage that I felt.

I wanted to mould him into my incarnate.

For some reason, some official that had been in some way fortunate enough to be away from Omicron on that glorious day had paid highly to have me spared. I'd never felt gratitude to anyone before, but the anger in the blue bots optics when he heard the news was almost enough to die for.

It'd been decided that I'd be jettisoned into a black hole as a means of destroying my immortal spark, but through some twist of fate, the ship carrying me had crashed on a planet full of energon.

It seemed that fortune smiled on me for some reason throughout my life.

The price that I had to pay was slavery; the one reason that I'd started my rampage was to escape the bonds of slavery.

Rampage, I liked that name.

This fool Megatron cut a piece out of my spark, I'd never felt so violated. I wanted more than anything to crush that freak, but he seemed to have the same delight in causing pain as I did; he often crushed my spark to keep me in line. It was the only time that I'd felt real pain.

On that planet, I'd found another like me; I'd dubbed her Transmutate. Unfortunately, the energon content on that planet was enough to make her spark unstable, enough to make it volatile, to detonate.

Knowing that I was the one that fired the missile that killed her brought on a different kind of pain, but in some way, I blamed the blue bot for it.

But, then something unexpected happened; the blue bot who I'd tormented and driven insane showed up, calling himself 'Depth Charge'.

The time that I'd spent in the stasis pod had completed what I'd set out to achieve; he was totally insane, he had no respect for his superior, nor any of his crewmembers.

The best part was knowing that he was willing to kill innocents himself just to get a shot at me.

If only he could understand what I'd done for him; I'd unleashed a potential that would never had been realised without my help.

The bot now stood over me, even now trying to avenge his friends by trying to kill me.

I looked up at those eyes, cold, yellow, full of blind hatred, and a rage that I'd put there.

I looked up at him and laughed at what I'd created, and just how the circumstances had changed. It was Omicron all over again; my creation, my monster now stood over me, forcing an energon shard down toward my spark, revelling in the situation of trying to kill me, just as I'd revelled in killing his family, his friends, his mind.

One thing that he couldn't see of my plan was the final similarity between now and Omicron; he hadn't broken me. If he killed me now without breaking my resolve, I'd win.

I finally grasped the importance of that fact.

"Take it X, right through your twisted spark." I laughed back at him.

Fate had smiled on me all throughout my life, even now.

Depth Charge couldn't grasp the perfection of my plan and how it had all come together, full circle.

If he killed me now without breaking my resolve, I'd win.

If I let him kill me, I'd win.

I let go of the shard…


End file.
